CyberpowerPC's Compal PBL21: The Shark's New Teeth
by Dustin Sklavos on July 11, 2011 12:30 AM ESTBattery, Noise, and Heat
Once again, as with our review of the NBLB2, it's worth noting that the notebooks advertised on CyberpowerPC's site offer a 48Wh battery while our review unit sports a 58Wh battery. This seems to be fairly common, but given the relative size of the battery in the unit I have to wonder if it's just an error on the site.
Either way, the PBL21 gets to take advantage of NVIDIA's Optimus technology, while hybrid graphics solutions from AMD still seem to be somewhat rarefied. The Alienware M17x R3 we reviewed recently had switchable graphics off of its Radeon HD 6970M, but it was nowhere near as seamless as Optimus has been. Ironically the best place to find good battery life with solid AMD graphics right now may very well be Llano!
The Dell XPS 15 doesn't just sport a bigger battery than the Compal PBL21, it uses it better too. Battery life for the PBL21 is actually quite poor, which is disheartening given the advantages it leverages. We're really past the era where three hours of useful battery life is an acceptable minimum; Sandy Bridge offers better efficiency overall and we should be using notebooks that take advantage of that. The Dell XPS 15 runs roughshod over Compal's offering; its battery may be less a little than twice as large, but it's pulling more than twice the running time of the PBL21. If you prefer a comparison with similar size batteries, here's how the PBL21 stacks up to the XPS 15 with a 56Wh battery.
Thankfully, it may be a testament to the PBL21 that I didn't notice it much during testing (apart from its bright, brilliant screen). Noise levels are comfortably low even under extreme load, and subjectively it didn't run particularly hot.
These temperatures remain reasonable for a mobile quad-core and decently-powered GPU. Given the PBL21's relatively quiet profile, Compal seems to have struck a good balance between thermal performance and acoustics.
Apart from a mild hotspot in the corner, the surface temperatures of the Compal PBL21 remain entirely reasonable and even a bit cool. Whether rendering out video or enjoying a gaming session, the PBL21 isn't likely to intrude too much.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
It's true, and if that was litigatible class action lawyers would've been circling Sony like sharks years ago. the first PS3 game to upsample came out only a year or two after the console launched. The clueless brigade of the internet press concluded that it meant that PS# hardware was maxed out and that the console would be fated for a very early replacement.shooty - Monday, July 11, 2011 - link
"Noise levels are comfortably low even under extreme load..."Is the this the only mention of noise or did I miss something? Noise levels are important in a notebook, can you please have a comparison graph of this notebooks noise levels idling and under load? Similar to what is done for graphics cards.
Thanks
aranyagag - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
why is it that except apple no one is capable of giving a 16:10 or taller screen -- am I the only one that does not spend all the time on the notebook watching movies?and even for 16:9 movies I prefer the onscreen menu to remain visible-- and not hide the movie.
Kakureru - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
last time I had a Compal laptop, the support was complete crap.I was left to my own devices as I had to fix obscure built in un replaceable components
with the life cycle of less than one service pack cycle...
I would be willing to invest another look if that has changed.
StrangerGuy - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link
WTF...vendors still wanna build laptops with glossy surfaces in Q3 2011 despite we saying a million times that we don't want out laptops to be fingerprint and scratch magnets.